Beyond Locavorism: Food Diversity for Food Security (carbon-fuel transport remains essential)

By Pierre Desrochers -- February 22, 2013

“The diversification of our food supply sources via cost-effective and large-scale, long-distance transportation is one of the great unappreciated wonders of our age…. [T]he best way to improve the security of humanity’s food supply is to press forward with specialized large-scale production in the world’s most suitable locations, backed up with ever more scientific research and greater reliance on (for the foreseeable future), carbon fuel-powered long-distance trade.”

In a speech delivered in 1875, the Australian entrepreneur Thomas Sutcliffe Mort observed that the advent of the railroad, the steamship, and artificial refrigeration had paved the way to a new age where the

• “various portions of the earth will each give forth their products for the use of each and of all,”
• “over-abundance of one country will make up for the deficiency of another,” and
• “superabundance of the year of plenty… for the scant harvest of its successor.”

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